Characters and events of Roman History eBook

In this family quarrel, which comprises a struggle
of everlasting tendencies, Julia represented the new
spirit that will prevail, Tiberius, the old, destined
to perish; but for the time being, both spirits, however
opposed, were necessary; for peace did not expand its
gifts in the Empire without the protection of the great
armies that fought on the Rhine and on the Danube.
If the spirit of peace refreshed Rome, Italy, the
Provinces, only the old aristocratic and military
spirit could keep the Germans on the Rhine. As
in all great social conflicts, the two opposing parties
were both, in a certain measure and each from its
own point of view, right. Just for that reason,
the equilibrium could be found only by a continual
struggle in which men on one side and on the other
were destined in turn to triumph or fall according
to the moment; a struggle in which Augustus, fated
to act the part of judge—­that is, to recognise,
with a final formal sanction, a sentence already pronounced
by facts—­had against his will in turn to
condemn some and reward others.

Julia will remain at Pandataria, and Tiberius will
return to Rome when the danger on the Rhine becomes
too threatening, yet without much lessening the conclusive
vengeance of Julia. That will come in the long
torment of the reign of Tiberius; in the infamy that
will pursue him to posterity. After having been
pitilessly hated and persecuted in life, this man
and this woman, who had personified two social forces
eternally at war with each other, will both fall in
death into the same abyss of unmerited infamy:
tragic spectacle and warning lesson on the vanity
of human judgments!

Wine in Roman History

In history as it is generally written, there are to
be seen only great personages and events, kings, emperors,
generals, ministers, wars, revolutions, treaties.
When one closes a huge volume of history, one knows
why this state made a great war upon that; understands
the political thinking, the strategic plans, the diplomatic
agreements of the powerful, but would hardly be able
to answer much more simple questions: how people
ate and drank, how the warriors, politicians, diplomats,
were clad, and in general how men lived at any particular
time.

History does not usually busy itself with little men
and small facts, and is therefore often obscure, unprecise,
vague, tiresome. I believe that if some day I
deserve praise, it will be because I have tried to
show that everything has value and importance; that
all phenomena interweave, act, and react upon each
other—­economic changes and political revolutions,
costumes, ideas, the family and the state, land-holding
and cultivation. There are no insignificant events
in history; for the great events, like revolutions
and wars, are inevitably and indissolubly accompanied
by an infinite number of slight changes, appearing
in every part of a nation: if in life there are
men without note, and if these make up the great majority
of nations—­that which is called the “mass”—­there
is no greater mistake than to believe they are extraneous
to history, mere inert instruments in the hands of
the oligarchies that govern. States and institutions
rest on this nameless mass, as a building rests upon
its foundations.